Pages: 247 - 247Abstract: ANTHONY CROSS is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Texas State University. His research focuses on the ethical dimensions of our engagement with artworks and other cultural objects, on aesthetic normativity, and on the ethics of partiality.PubDate: 2017-11-07DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayx025Issue No:Vol. 57, No. 3 (2017)

Authors:Robinson J.Pages: 249 - 267Abstract: In Sight and Sensibility Dominic Lopes argues that expressiveness in pictures should be analyzed on the model of the “contour” theory of musical expressiveness, according to which an “expression” need not express anything about the inner psychological states of a person. According to his “contour theory of pictorial expression,” expression by scenes and designs requires “no being to whom the expressed emotion is attributable” (the “missing person problem”). However, on this account expression has lost its fundamental raison d’être, that of manifesting somebody’s actual emotional states. By contrast, I argue that successful works of pictorial expression depict the way the world appears to someone (the artist or his/her persona) when in some emotional state. Moreover, the emotional attitude thus expressed by the work is an important unifying principle for pictures, and hence an important artistic value.PubDate: 2017-10-28DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayw076Issue No:Vol. 57, No. 3 (2017)

Authors:Levinson J.Pages: 269 - 282Abstract: In the beginning—or more exactly, the seventies, when I was in graduate school at the University of Michigan—was the void, and darkness was upon the face of the waters. Philosophical reflection on the experience, meaning, and powers of music by analytic philosophers was almost non-existent. And then, as the 1980s dawned, came Peter Kivy. Suddenly there was light, and analytic philosophy of music was born. In this piece I summarize the substance of the successive instalments in the astounding series of books on the philosophy of music that Peter published between 1980 and 2002, allowing myself some critical reflections in a few cases.PubDate: 2017-08-26DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayx017Issue No:Vol. 57, No. 3 (2017)

Authors:Melchionne K.Pages: 283 - 298Abstract: Our lives are filled with aesthetic choices, that is, choices of objects for aesthetic experience. Choice is crucial to having a fulfilling aesthetic life. Our immediate satisfaction and long term flourishing require the ability to generate rewarding aesthetic opportunities. A good aesthetic life is one of good aesthetic choices. Given the centrality of choice to a good aesthetic life, aesthetic theory is in need of an account of choice. However, aesthetic choice has gone unexamined. This paper considers how choice helps to make us who we are as aesthetic persons. I situate aesthetic choice within debates in contemporary choice theory. The paper also examines whether the recommenders on websites like Amazon or Netflix pose a risk to our aesthetic flourishing. Aesthetic choice is mostly constructive and conditional, in other words, ad hoc and easily influenced. Aesthetic choices tend to be small choices, with low stakes and relaxed deliberation. The effect of our choices is cumulative, and the import of individual choices is best judged by seeing them in the context of other choices, especially the plans to which they belong.PubDate: 2017-09-27DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayx019Issue No:Vol. 57, No. 3 (2017)

Authors:Cross A.Pages: 299 - 317Abstract: Most recent discussions of reasons in art criticism focus on reasons that justify beliefs about the value of artworks. Reviving a long-neglected suggestion from Paul Ziff, I argue that we should focus instead on art-critical reasons that justify actions—namely, particular ways of engaging with artworks. I argue that a focus on practical rather than theoretical reasons yields an understanding of criticism that better fits with our intuitions about the value of reading art criticism, and which makes room for a nuanced distinction between criticism that aims at universality and criticism that is resolutely personal.PubDate: 2017-09-27DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayx016Issue No:Vol. 57, No. 3 (2017)

Authors:Sagoff M.Pages: 319 - 329Abstract: Richard Stopford, in criticizing my defense of purist restoration, attributes to me and refutes a metaphysical view I do not have concerning the identity and persistence conditions of an art work. I took for granted the ordinary idea of identity as continuity-in-space-and-time-under-a-sortal-concept, such as statue. I argued that Michelangelo’s Pietà remained the same statue after it was disfigured but that the damage was irreparable. By fixing molded prosthetics to the ruined work of art, the Vatican introduced a macaronic element into one’s aesthetic attitude toward the Pietà by making one attend simultaneously, without any visual guidance as to which is which, to (1) parts of the statue that were completed by Michelangelo’s hand and intended to be a work of art and (2) pieces added in the twentieth century for an different purpose, e.g., to make viewing the statue less disconcerting than a recognition of the damage would demand. An integral restoration, in contrast, allows one both to envision the art work as created and to grieve for what has been lost.PubDate: 2017-08-29DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayx011Issue No:Vol. 57, No. 3 (2017)